


No Challenge in That

by Mar_tin_can



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Caduceus-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Flashbacks, I started this back in october, If You Squint - Freeform, Major Character Injury, Other, POV Caduceus Clay, This is my first CR fanfic, Woo!, background beaujester - Freeform, pre c2e86
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23055283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mar_tin_can/pseuds/Mar_tin_can
Summary: "(Caduceus) felt counterfeit for a moment, a plague of guilt nipping at him. What greed, weakness can bring."Caduceus experiences a moment of self-reflection and uncertainty when an attack of his strays from its intended target, accidently striking one of his beloved friend's instead.
Relationships: Beauregard & Caduceus Clay & Fjord & Jester Lavorre & Nott & Caleb Widogast & Yasha, Caduceus Clay & Cornelius Clay, Caduceus Clay & The Mighty Nein, Caduceus Clay & The Wildmother, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47





	No Challenge in That

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, I welcome you to my little pocket of escape. This fanfic takes place before rescuing Yasha as I had begun it back in October actually, I find a lot of home in Cad's ideology and hope I did his and everyone's minds justice.  
> Thank you and take care!

Leaf earrings adorned stretched digits of hickory, the foliage wrapping itself along thin, riveting canyons crafted by time’s erosion on the forests many branches. The occasional almond shaped piece of greenery would perform pirouettes with the streams of wind as it fell from their huddled siblings who were still latched to wood.

The air traversed the pathway like a member of the group who left a conglomerate of mismatched tracks past their capes and coat tails. This personified entity, the air, seemed to fiddle with the above timber and allowed for a lulling percussion to rise from the branches whilst buzzing insects crafted a frazzled melody.

A pink gaze cataloged one leaf’s courageous descent; its form cradled Catha’s girth for a moment and in that second proved its blessing. 

_It wasn’t your choice, but you’re doing a good thing here._ The  firbolg promised the traveling plant,  _the world is bigger than your garden._ Bristling leaves above were interpreted as c oos of encouragement to Caduceus and he intended to offer further empathy when their regular six sets of footsteps were suddenly accompanied by a new addition. 

Grey slender ears swayed to the mess of shrubbery and wildlife on the parties left, the level of perplexity increasing when the bass drum of steps was then disguised by the cacophony of orchestration that had been enveloping their path. Caduceus’ sleeve became an ocean’s surface, the fabric rippling in unpredictable patterns, as he raised his finger to point towards what he had heard,  _ the  Wildmother is everywhere. _

“ Hey there.” Tension budded throughout The Mighty Nein with the abrupt greeting, the party imitating the cow-man's halt with more intensity as hands hovered warily in the air. 

“Caduceus,  did  you hear something?” Fjord’s inquiry was answered with the  firbolg re-purposing his finger to stand against his lips to ask for silence. 

“Are you talking to the trees? Getting that green?” The stout goblin made an unfamiliar gesture of pinching her thumb and index finger and relaying them to her lips,  does that mean quiet also?  Before he could say  anything, Beauregard proved whispering can be useless with her own response frothing with ferocity, Cad could imagine her hawk-like gaze peering through her goggles into the shadows before she announced with a gravely groan , 

“I’m going around.”

“Wait a second, hey, no one’s begging you to look.” The  crisp crunch of stomped on leaves  was all that  responded to  Fjord’s feigned attempt to  wrangle in Beau’s attention ,  he seemed to be learning as well that  sometimes the secret is to just let  certain members of their group entertain themselves . “ Was it something we need to worry about  Duceus ?” The half-orc revealed subtle exasperation, their choice of traveling past dusk weighing on his syllables. Caduceus’ locks were swept off the crook of his lithe shoulder  into loose tangles towards the path before them and  that was enough of an answer for him to lean back into the heels of his feet.

“I don’t think so.” Caduceus felt his rib cage tremble with the use of his voice but sensed his own trepidation assisting in that faux reality. He stepped forward but his gaze lingered on the slithering roots that dressed the dirt in dormant snakes. It was when his lethargic eyes would begin lazing back towards the path that avian cries would assault the scenery’s façade of tranquility, the bellow of frantic wings crassly interrupted the earlier alignment of sounds.

Their varying forms were electrified into motion and began creeping to the tree line. In passing Caduceus heard Jester make a call back to the “stinky guys” Nott and she had angered back at the tavern they had last been to, a prediction that they could have been followed. Mr. Caleb tried to challenge the theory by explaining how the men appeared to be simple farmers but only was given,

“Tech-nic-ally  Cayleb you were a stinky guy and you’re like, super-duper strong now, so...” The  tiefling drew out the word, “they could have followed us.” Caduceus heard no response as they all continued with high knees, dedicating their attention back to the unfamiliar terrain that nipped at their boots and occasionally grappled their multicolored squadron’s attire. Theese trees  whose  branches once were leaning downwards to  greet  travelers with handshakes  now lurched in wind conjured contortions,  their  wooden joints crackling with the ache of moving. The landscape was no longer forthcoming. 

After another bout of quiet Cad would note the disappearance of their resident rogue with a familiarity but approach the lack of their most driven and hot-headed member’s return with more concern. Above the inky sky’s florescent freckles were occasionally obscured by a canopy of its rooted counterpart that  stretched up towards the stars with gnarled limbs, immersing the party in a quilt of uncertainty with the enveloping darkness. 

With every signature their now smaller party left in tow, sweltering anxiety and rousing uncertainty continued to waltz itself into  iron knots. Until the silence was pillaged by a roar of what Caduceus interpreted as shock and frustration. The cleric felt a shadow of the exclamation scraping the interior of his own tender throat, empathy possessing him with an idea of how conjuring such a shout could feel. 

“That was Beau!” Jester cried in a jittery tone that vibrated with  anxiety, “we have to go! Go, go, go!” Her voice’s pitch heightened with her crescendo, emotions making her go shrill as her calculated pace  transformed into a reckless sprint. The blue  tiefling’s sleeves fluttered in her midst, tickling the wind with  their  feverish flight. 

There was a chorus of maddened swears from the party to hide the silent hopes that pleaded for the monk to not be injured beyond repair; and amidst their foolhardy pursuit  Caduceus perceived that his surrounding members’ ears were becoming slaves to the lack of further sound, a guilt crippling their intellect. Which made the next bout of grunts that intercepted the wind an even more succulent delight to release relief. 

“She’s over here,” Fjord assisted, gesturing to their right with a blade of starlight, ghastly cobalt mist wafted amongst the night’s currents in the sword’s wake, the  shimmering  particles tumbling over one another  like  folding waves. The Mighty Neins’  direction heeded the advice, quickly traversing the grounds that squelched beneath their hazardous footing, the moss performed as a sleek carpet beneath them when they then could spy a desertion of trees ahead.

“Oohh...Scheisse.”

A grating pant occupied a divot behind one root’s girth near them and without sparing a glance Caduceus could discern its owner, if not by the breathing but by the disrespect of her next remark.

“Your Goddess is a mad woman!”  _Now that’s just not necessary._ Nott was huddled into herself, a twine ball of soiled, yellow cloth with her crossbow teetering atop the red oak ridges she peaked behind. Caduceus could only muster sparing a glimpse to her form before his eyes were wrenched back to the sight that inspired her words by intangible, craving hands.

It was an entity with distorted shoulder blades living in conjunction with twitching shrubbery that blistered between eroded mountain ranges . Phlegm mulled along canyons of taut tendons, the stream of sappy mucous secreting from the hives of holes throughout the being’s geographic build. 

“It isn’t nature without destruction.” Caduceus couldn’t resist offering an explanation while gauging his best moment to interfere in the fight ahead of them. “My patron merely,”  _wow, this is a big guy_ , "moves the branches to reveal a path we did not see before.”

“Well, I’m just spit  ballin ’ here  but maybe next time you and  your brother from the wildmother  are three-way  callin’ her,” Nott  screlted, “tell her not to be so literal!” 

“Ja, that is a big bush my friend.” 

“Ha!”

Their resident goblin scuttled into the night’s mirage of stillness during Jester’s giggle, the rogue’s toes deftly tucking into foot holes Caduceus’ blind gaze could not discern in the terrain. The  firbolg could understand Nott’s point of view, oh he could, he can also not appreciate it just as much at the same time.

The ground shook beneath the lumbering mass of their current foe, antiquated joints whining beneath them while the migrating breeze whistled through the scabby exterior of the moving tree, the asymmetric, dissonant tune added woodwinds to the concert of nature’s symphony to accompany the battle climaxing beneath it. 

“Uh, uh! Fuckin’, arrows and hitting it head on won’t do it! Caleb!” Beauregard’s hair trickled out of its braid, slumped against a dewy hairline from exertion. She has been at this thing longer than them all, yet her knuckles galloped once more against the creature’s foliage hide. She decorated the surface with  rosy iron and her perseverance earned her ravaging cracks in the armor of its shin, crumbling debris puncturing her hands in retaliation. 

“ I am sorry Smokey,” the  Zemnian apologized just before the coiling vines and roots that crafted the creature’s shoulder became the meal of starved flames, assaulting the gloom in their pocket of the woods for a blink whilst Caleb used this as a distraction to step backwards a few paces afterwards.

It is here where Caduceus knew he could find a home for his action and that moment’s collar was  snagged in time, practiced motions felt sluggish with calculated thought but were performed at a swift pace. Spindly fingers clothed in  violet gloves began articulating with drifting knowledge of an adventurer before him. A mulches musk started to curdle the air enveloping the cleric’s shoulders, this cloak of scent hanging from his limbs but not for the purpose of intimidation but validation.  _ This is  all part of our tapestry._

With divine personal assurance Caduceus’s digits ascend before him and with light twinning the Star Razor’s ambiance a pathway of sentient, radiant particles interrupted the humid air towards the raging tree from his palm carved in secrets. His heart battered against the interior of its marrow cage, thrashing with energy and magic that existed through him. His apprehended facial features bared no knowledge for anyone observing it save for the ritualistic tongue which explored the dried canyons of peeling skin atop his rupturing lower lip. 

Which is now bleeding. Grinding canine’s sharpened from a vegetable diet abruptly feasted on the thin flesh in  one swift ,  stressed bite,  _ no.  _

It was different in the Happy Fun Ball, actions are an extension of a person’s consciousness, yes, however in this moment, the assailant is a messenger of his faith. The vibrant beam of his guiding bolt was intended to  work with Beauregard’s efforts  against the  treant’s shin, it was an assistance. It became an assault. 

The air felt swollen in Caduceus’s esophagus, soggy with emotions that mankind hasn’t yet created words to describe as his  iris’ were suffocated by the derailing effects of his  decision. 

The  Firbolg was notorious for his vision and  despite the dull night light it continued its  reign of efficiency like a cruel joke as he, and his friends, witnessed his guiding bolt sear into the tissue of their monk’s back. Ropes of muscle spasmed in  primal rhythms, wriggling beneath tight skin as if  trying to  release itself .  Beauregard’s shoulder twisted inwards  into her form, instincts attempting to create  distance between herself and the  scorched  meat. A growl  clawed her tongue  while thick saliva slicked the stalactites of white enamel that decorated her mouth, it frozen open in a quiet exclamation. 

“Beau?” Fjord barked the syllable in replacement to a question, constrained worry  a  grappling undertow beneath an attempted  façade of  conviction.  The Star Razor skittered atop the creature’s husk of  greenery; its iridescent, opal-like blade unable to pierce  the wood armor whilst his attention was drawn. 

“It’s fine,  I'm fine!”  The body  is  its own personal  ecosystem and like a crater  left behind by a fallen tree or the withering bank of a riverside, it has a rite to its  remembrances .  Caduceus’s consciousness stuttered and  with pause he felt to be a puppet to a waterfall of ideas he had no semblance to the order of. He was no missionary of chaos ,  no crinkling flame  arguing with the question of  whether to devour the surrounding wastes,  nor the divot between waves that can glare at either land or sky.  He had the responsibility of an expectation of tranquility

The Cleric felt counterfeit for a moment,  a plague of guilt nipping at him. What greed, weakness can bring. Although the  loftier  level of  street  knowledge his siblings  had on him  when in  comparison,  the entirety of his being  knew that his devotion meant each day  to be a confrontation  and test of  faith. His breaths and  decisions are reflections of his answers to  the  Wildmother however  with his core quaking in selfish introspection  his stream of thought  was warped  into  white capped rapids.  It was then that his father interrupted him in an unexpected instant.

“ _So you had spent your day with the  Galoways.” _

_ Caduceus stood with a lesser  number of seasons coddling his lithe frame, jutting, emaciated bones ruined any  similarity he could have to his father’s robust  silhouette .  The young  firbolg was  bold enough to seek out his parental after Colton’s prank of leaving him in a deep, open grave which had ended in his missing  both lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner.  Dusting’s of brown hues  still  powdered his grey fuzz and a twig like a flag is protruding from the pique of his  petal hair.  Dad’s padded palms enveloped his shoulders easily and offered a remorseful squeeze whilst his chest extended with a gust of breath before, _

_ “Mom and I, before we had you kids did a great deal of  thinkin ’. Her more than me but that goes for any day about anything.”  The side comment was spoken through a tender chuckle. “How could we,  help you in helping the  Wildmother.  It was  confusing, children are a privilege and our kin is a gift even if they leave us in graves.” Caduceus barely refrained from groaning, replacing the verbal remark with a solemn nod to feign agreement . His eyes traversed the air to his hands, his nail-beds were alike to the sleep chambers they placed the dead in. Crumbling dirt beneath his nails offered him something to fidget with, his  fingers shoveled minerals  away whilst his father continued . _

_ “When I would be making  graves, I would think of who I wanted my children to be and  how that meant how did I want them to be treated ” A girthy hand clumsily tugged some strands of hair from Caduceus’ face, inspiring him to look up to the man before him. “ I would think, I  don’t want every thing to be nice to him, I want  the world to challenge him,  I want people to discipline him, and want people to tell him  when he is wrong .”  Then, with a firm tug, the stick that  had been scratching the surface of his scalp released its grip  as dad wiggled it free. _

_ “We cannot  want every thing to be nice Caduceus. That is not fair to an upbringing, there’s no challenge in that.” _

The ground shuddering as if trembling from a bitter breeze awoke Caduceus from his thoughts , the moving ground in combination with the raw memory of his father causing tiny hills to texture the skin beneath his fur.  In the span of his vulnerability his compatriots had seemingly defeated  their enemy, the mass of lumber crumpled in a heap of wood limbs that  stretched towards the tree line. It was as though the being, even in death, was grasping for assistance from stagnant brothers who gave their legs to the land.

“ Thanks Jes.” Came Beauregard’s voice, its gravelly nature made Caduceus’ ears dance in the air. The hearing aids were quicker to face the human than their owner  who  fought between two conflicting views to turn to her.  All of Caleb’s globules of  light hung near where their monk sat as if stars that descended from above, these circling lanterns extenuated the grease and oil that  provided a shine to  the woman’s  skin,  her chest expanding with tempered breaths. “Am I glowing?”  Beau  proceeded to strike various poses, each one  contrasting her personality and current state more than what preceded it,  it was obvious she was trying to make Jester laugh. The young  tiefling’s fingers not having yet  left her shoulder despite the completion of her spell,  Jester’s hand was still delicate even to  the healed flesh.

“Beau...” Head’s found  a purchase on his image, his anxiety offered him the solace that no  eyebrows were knitted into each other in disdain or distrust. Was it a problem that they had grown so used to being attacked by  their  friends? The audience of multi-colored eyes  made him  pocket the question for later, he was to focus  on what was in the foreground of his plane of vision, not the peripheral. “That was entirely uncalled for, uhm,” There was  drying mud smeared a crossed his gloves in splattered rhythms ,  _the lichen will like that, they need t hat to grow_. “ That was not a cruelty of me and wasn’t intended , but uhm, well,” A pause as he mulled over his own remark, “it was me. And-”

“Did I break Caduceus?” Beauregard’s eyes were darts, these  bulbs of chestnut and auburn  flashing from one face to the next with inquiries on what she was to do before returning to their party member who gave Jester a run for her money in their love of pink. “Dude,  you don’t have to look at me like I’m some squishy guy, our resident one hit wonder is next to you.”  There was a sigh released from the deepest crater of a person’s being to his right,

“I did not ask for this life Beauregard.”

The loose flesh between Caduceus’ eyebrows rolled inwards, hugging its neighbor as his face adopted the emotion of contemplation. H is lips thinning as they pressed into each other, concentration painted his features whilst his brain was hollow, where was the philosophy he granted others but could not  scavenge for  himself in that second. 

“Don’t make a big deal out of  it man, we’re not brand new here. I’m alive, you’re alive and the bad guy is dead.” Then, as if to somehow make her statement  the stronger, the monk lifted her arms up and tightened her  lean muscles in a flex that adorned her arms like medals, “No pain, no gains.” That’s what  caused a ruckus of laughter to bubble up amongst the group,  a familial warmth granting them all a moment of resurrected life. The  firbolg’s own  chuckle thundered in his chest, reverberating beneath his chest plate like someone projecting their voice into a closed cone. 

“Well, isn’t that just nice.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Woo, woo, woo. I'm flattered you read to the end.  
> The way I wrote this was in an instance where due to Cad's lack of dark vision and wanting to attack where Beau has been hitting particularly Matt would have asked for Taliesin to roll a d6 where 1-3 he'd hit the treant and 4-6 his guiding bolt would hid Beau. We all read what came of that.
> 
> Goodness, thank you for reading. To combine two things such as CR and writing has been very fun and maybe I'll do more of it?


End file.
